News - Spy agency boss warns of cyber threat

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Infrastructure worries and worms that cost Britain billions.

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Read more.

Die Hard 4.0 on the TV one night, then this within a couple of days? ;)

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Originally Posted by Iain Lobban@GCHQ

... the internet lowers "the bar for entry to the espionage game.

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Originally Posted by Iain Lobban@GCHQ

... the ‘disturbing' hike in online crime is costing the economy billions of pounds and there has been a ‘massive' amount of poaching of intellectual property too.

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Interesting that the head of GCHQ, should mention internet piracy, and more serous (and life threatening) internet crime in the same speech, without mentioning how the inverse correlation between the two. Specifically, the measures in the recent digital economy bill to crack down on internet piracy will make life easer for more serous cyber criminals, hackers and terrorists.

The new disconnection measures Digital economy bill might in the future see a huge number of internet users disconnected. If this happens then we are likely to see lots of people start using encrypted internet connections, and autonomous proxy systems such as Tor for everyday surfing. At the moment very few people use such methods, and even fewer use them correctly.

If anonymous and encrypted surfing becomes the norm, then the boys and girls at GCHQ will have two problems. Firstly, there will be far more encrypted traffic about, and most of it will not be from terrorists or the like, so GCHQ will not be able identify terrorists from the fact that they are encrypting their internet. In effect the terrorists will be able to hide in crowds of normal users who just want to download some movies without paying for them.

Secondly, knowledge on how to set-up an encrypted internet connection will become a lot more widespread. Suppose we have a newly radicalised teenager who wants to encrypt his internet so that he can email and chat with his fellow radicals without getting snooped on by MI5. At the moment information on how to set up autonomous surfing is rare and hard to come by. In five years time it might be frequently discussed on Hexus forums, and as much of the common knowledge of tech communities, as iPhone jailbreaking is now.

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Originally Posted by chrestomanci

Interesting that the head of GCHQ, should mention internet piracy, and more serous (and life threatening) internet crime in the same speech, without mentioning how the inverse correlation between the two. Specifically, the measures in the recent digital economy bill to crack down on internet piracy will make life easer for more serous cyber criminals, hackers and terrorists.

The new disconnection measures Digital economy bill might in the future see a huge number of internet users disconnected. If this happens then we are likely to see lots of people start using encrypted internet connections, and autonomous proxy systems such as Tor for everyday surfing. At the moment very few people use such methods, and even fewer use them correctly.

If anonymous and encrypted surfing becomes the norm, then the boys and girls at GCHQ will have two problems. Firstly, there will be far more encrypted traffic about, and most of it will not be from terrorists or the like, so GCHQ will not be able identify terrorists from the fact that they are encrypting their internet. In effect the terrorists will be able to hide in crowds of normal users who just want to download some movies without paying for them.

Secondly, knowledge on how to set-up an encrypted internet connection will become a lot more widespread. Suppose we have a newly radicalised teenager who wants to encrypt his internet so that he can email and chat with his fellow radicals without getting snooped on by MI5. At the moment information on how to set up autonomous surfing is rare and hard to come by. In five years time it might be frequently discussed on Hexus forums, and as much of the common knowledge of tech communities, as iPhone jailbreaking is now.

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Very good point... There is a sense of an inability for MP's, policy makers, government officials and lobbyist to think critically about the effects of that which they want to implement. All they are thinking about is there respective vested interests and how any such act or policy could possibly benefit them regardless of its side effects/draw backs, which is really sad.

They basically think and do everything with blinkers on, blind to problems they are causing for themselves. Never bother to think about the bigger picture, or perhaps the causes of the problem rather than just the problem itself.

As you said I think Governments are more of a threat to their own economy and cyber security than any hacker is. They keep shooting themselves in the foot and wondering why the hell there is so much blood around them.